THE ARTICLE · 8 MIN
The Prince is, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s words, the work of Niccolò Machiavelli “most commonly associated with his name”. Here are its big ideas in our own words, the story of how it came to be written, what scholars still argue about, and a few small practices drawn from the parts that hold up. For eight popular claims checked line by line against the Italian, see our companion page, Machiavelli: What The Prince Actually Says, and 8 Claims Checked; this page does not repeat that work.
About the book
Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469. From 1498 he served the Florentine republic as its Second Chancellor, travelling on diplomatic missions across Italy and to the French and imperial courts. In 1512, with the help of Spanish and papal troops, the Medici family returned to power and dissolved the republic. Machiavelli was dismissed at once, and when he was wrongly suspected of conspiring against the Medici he was imprisoned and tortured for several weeks in early 1513. After his release he withdrew to his family’s farm at Sant’Andrea in Percussina, outside Florence, where he wrote the book.
On 10 December 1513 he described it in a letter to his friend Francesco Vettori, then Florence’s ambassador to the pope in Rome. He had composed “uno opuscolo De principatibus”, a little work on principalities, about what a principality is, what kinds there are, how they are gained, how they are kept and why they are lost (our translation). He said he was addressing it to Giuliano de’ Medici. Giuliano died in 1516, and the dedication went instead to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino; in Marriott’s translation it is addressed “To the Magnificent Lorenzo Di Piero De’ Medici”. The book circulated in handwritten copies and was first printed in 1532, five years after Machiavelli died in 1527.
When exactly he finished it is argued over. Federico Chabod argued in 1927 that it was written between July and December 1513. Gennaro Sasso and the book’s critical editor, Inglese, argue for two phases of writing, the second finished by May 1514; Martelli dated a deep reworking of the text to 1518; and an older hypothesis placed the dedication and the last chapter, probably, in 1515–1516. Maurizio Viroli argues that the last chapter was written with the rest, by December 1513 or early 1514.
It is short: a dedication and twenty-six chapters. It belongs to a long tradition of advice books for rulers, and breaks with it: those books, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it, held that power was “only rightful if it was exercised by a ruler whose personal moral character was strictly virtuous.” We read the whole book in W. K. Marriott’s English translation of 1908 and checked key passages against the Italian text. Quotations below are Marriott’s unless marked as our translation.
The big ideas
1. Describe politics as it is
In chapter 15 Machiavelli says he will follow “the real truth of the matter” rather than “the imagination of it”, because “how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live”. The Italian is la verità effettuale della cosa, the effective truth of things. As we read it, much of the book’s force comes from this choice to describe rather than to preach.
2. New rulers have the hardest job
Much of the book is about new principalities, which, he says, are harder to hold than inherited ones, and about relying on your own strength: “all armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed” (chapter 6). His main modern example is Cesare Borgia, who gained his state while his father was pope and lost it when his father’s power declined. Machiavelli knows of no better precepts for a new prince “than the example of his actions” (chapter 7).
3. Rely on your own arms
“Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous,” he writes in chapter 12, and war, he says in chapter 14, is “the sole art that belongs to him who rules”. He knew the question first-hand: the civic militia defeated by the Medici’s allies in 1512 was one he had organised.
4. Reputation is a tool, and appearances count
Chapters 15 to 18 take the qualities rulers are praised or blamed for, such as generosity, mercy and keeping one’s word, and ask what each costs. A ruler must know how to be “a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves” (chapter 18). People, he argues, judge “more by the eye than by the hand”: “Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.”
5. Cruelty, and its limits
Chapter 8 separates cruelty used once, out of necessity, and then turned to the subjects’ benefit, from cruelty that keeps growing. He calls the first kind “properly used, if of evil it is possible to speak well”, which concedes that it is still evil. Of Agathocles, who made himself ruler of Syracuse by having its senators killed, he writes that killing fellow citizens and betraying friends cannot be called virtù: “such methods may gain empire, but not glory.”
6. Do not be hated; the people are the safer base
A ruler needs “the people friendly, otherwise he has no security in adversity” (chapter 9). What makes a ruler hated, he says, is above all taking his subjects’ property and women (chapter 19), and “the best possible fortress is—not to be hated by the people” (chapter 20).
7. Choose advisers who tell the truth, when asked
Courts are full of flatterers. His answer in chapter 23 is a middle course: choose wise people, give them “only the liberty of speaking the truth” about what the ruler asks, question them on everything, and then decide for yourself.
8. Fortune governs half, and Italy needs a redeemer
Chapter 25 gives fortune control of “one-half of our actions”, leaving the rest to us, and compares it to a river in flood that can be channelled by defences built in calm weather. The chapter ends with a violent image of fortune as a woman who must be beaten to be mastered. The last chapter is an appeal to the Medici to raise their own army and free Italy from the “barbarians”, the foreign powers fighting over it: “To all of us this barbarous dominion stinks.”
What holds up
The book’s backstory, its dates and its key passages can be checked against Machiavelli’s own text and letters, and the rows above do that, including one observation from chapter 18 that modern research on outcome bias supports. Those studies are about rating decisions in written scenarios, not about how citizens judge rulers, so the match is with his observation, not proof of his politics. One question needs more room.
Sincere advice, satire, or something else?
This is a dispute about interpretation, and the evidence does not settle it.
- Read straight. Leo Strauss called Machiavelli a “teacher of evil”; a school associated with Benedetto Croce sees a “realist” suspending ordinary ethics in politics; Quentin Skinner argues that acts convention calls vicious are, for Machiavelli, a “last best” option. Maurizio Viroli also reads the book as sincere, but, in his publisher’s summary, as a book “about political redemption” whose main message is condensed in the last chapter. The letter to Vettori supports a sincere purpose of some kind: he wanted the book read by the Medici and hoped it would win him work.
- Read against the grain. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in 1762 that, while pretending to teach kings, Machiavelli taught the people, and that The Prince is “le livre des républicains”, the book of republicans. Garrett Mattingly called him “the supreme satirist”, Mary Dietz argued he wanted to “trap” the prince with advice designed to undo him, and Erica Benner, according to a review of her 2013 book, reads it as “a masterwork of ironic writing with a moral purpose”, by a Machiavelli who is “a republican”. His longer Discourses on Livy argues for republics.
Our reading: the letter shows what he hoped the book would do for him, but it cannot show whether he meant every line straight. That part is a judgement each reader makes.
How to use it
These practices come from the parts that hold up or from passages anyone can read for themselves. They describe what people do; what fits your situation is your call.
- Two columns: what is, and what ought to be. Chapter 15’s distinction can serve as a quick note before a decision. It is a way of looking rather than a tested technique.
- Judging a decision apart from its result. Outcome bias held up in a preregistered replication. Asking what was known when a choice was made, before asking how it turned out, is one way to notice it; the studies above measured the bias, not ways to reduce it.
- Asking for the truth on specific questions. Chapter 23’s middle course is Machiavelli’s advice, not a tested method.
Who it’s for, and who can skip it
It suits anyone interested in power, politics or the history of ideas. It is short and free to read in a public-domain translation. Readers looking for a leadership manual may find it narrower than its reputation: much of it is about armies, conquest and the Italian wars of his own day. His political views in full are in the Discourses on Livy.
If you liked this
- Machiavelli: What The Prince Actually Says, and 8 Claims Checked: the famous lines checked against the Italian, including “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”, which is not in The Prince.
- Deciding under uncertainty: famous decision tools and where they come from.
- Mental models from history: twelve sayings about power and strategy, checked against the sources.
Sources
- Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. W. K. Marriott (London: J. M. Dent, [1908]), Project Gutenberg; 1908 edition record, Internet Archive.
- Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe, Italian text, Italian Wikisource (dedication and chapters 8, 15, 17, 18, 25, 26).
- Niccolò Machiavelli, letter to Francesco Vettori, 10 December 1513, Italian Wikisource.
- Cary Nederman, “Niccolò Machiavelli”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (revised 2023).
- Gian Mario Anselmi, “Principe, Il”, and “Index librorum prohibitorum”, Enciclopedia machiavelliana (Treccani, 2014).
- Catholic Encyclopedia (1910), “Niccolò Machiavelli”.
- Ross J. Corbett, review of Erica Benner, Machiavelli’s Prince: A New Reading, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2014); Princeton University Press, Redeeming The Prince (Maurizio Viroli, 2014).
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social III.6 (1762), French Wikisource.
- J. Baron and J. C. Hershey, “Outcome bias in decision evaluation”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54 (1988); S. Aiyer et al., “Outcomes affect evaluations of decision quality”, International Review of Social Psychology 36 (2023).
Checked October 2026. What we read: the whole of The Prince in Marriott’s translation (Project Gutenberg #1232), with the dedication and chapters 8, 15, 17, 18, 25 and 26 checked against the Italian on Wikisource; the 1513 letter to Vettori in Italian; the Stanford Encyclopedia and Treccani entries in full; the review of Benner’s book and the publisher’s page for Viroli’s (not the books themselves); the abstracts of the two outcome-bias papers.
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